Thomas

The problem is automating the batch process. Windows movie maker isn't good for that. On a linux box I could set up a cron job to do it but you're going to have a hard time doing it in windows.

Why feed it into an encoder? All you're doing is adding cost. Just feed it in a capture card and software and store it on the file server. The cost of an ok encoder and ok software is more then the cost of the capture card and software.

I can hurt to record it. The rules for admissability of video evidence is pretty flexible on the part of a judge. Having audio recording makes it a little more likely to be tossed. And you have to tell everyone else that they are under recording if they enter the house. And you'll need to get that drawn up as a formal document that's signed.

I would pretty much avoid wireless at all costs. It's going to make the motion detection useless by adding alot of random interfearance to your system. And as far as the audio goes, I would drop that requirement. Take it from someone who is on a monitored camera system all during the day, you don't want your audio recorded. If it's a nanny cam, most of what you'll want is shaken baby/molestation and that's all video. Second is that the legal recording of audio can be a minefield. Depending on where you are located it may range from completely illegal to just mildly illegal. At the very least you are required to let the person being recorded know that they are under audio survellence. Which means the covert cameras just became useless. And the fact that it's your home has exactly zero legal weight in the arguement. Just because you own the properity doesn't give you much in the way of legal rights when it comes to audio recording. There is a balance between paranoia and being able to relax. It seems mild now untill someone finds a video clip of you doing something human, like falling out of a chair (yeah, that clip magiclly went poof from our system).

West Nile is only dangerous if you have the following problems: Weaken immune system caused by: Being very young Being very old Having a transplant Having AIDS Or being a horse. To everyone else West Nile causes a mild flu like diease.

It's odd they have problems with the Xeon boards.

Shielding. With modulated signals you don't have to worry about shielding as much. CCTV signals however are unmodulated and as such can be affected by interferance on a much greater scale.

I'm pretty sure the only way that Rory would have problems with the SEC is if they ran into him on vacation.

Yep. I have the same problem with lazy SQL admins not compacting their databases like they should, or MS Exchange admins who never do offline defrags for some reason. And I'm sure you've run into guys that have done Access databases and feel that it qualifies them to discuss the merits of PostgreSQL vs MS SQL vs MySQL vs Oracle.

But there are also very few sites that have manufacturers reps, vars and end users in the same site. This is a rare situation and as such it's has differant rules. And keep in mind that all three groups have things they want but don't get. That set of rules is why the signal to noise ratio is so high.

The DVR side is pretty easy. Even setting up and tuning the features is pretty trival. The hard part is the camera end. Selecting the right camera with the right features for you needs is the hard part. I've met plenty of good IT people who built nice DVRs that ended up being junk because they didn't focus the camera or placed it in such a way that the camera is useless. It's like getting an Oracle box designed and tweaked and then hiring a guy who can barely put together excel formulas to be your DBA. And the urge to tinker is fine and you'll find alot of the CCTV guys here share that urge. Several of the dealers I work with eagerly look forward to some pretty rough betas. But they also know that you don't deploy that beta on a customer's site. I'm sure every dealer here can tell you horror stories of jobs gone wrong. I remember one from here in which someone wired a silent alarm wrong. Instead of being silent it triggered a noise and spooked the robber. He shoots the woman at the counter. A simple wiring mistake and someone dies. It's an extreme example but I can tell you dozens of stories where someone put in a system and didn't get the cameras right and ended up with no usable video. You can tweak the Geovision software all you want but very little of what you do has an effect on the most important benchmark of all. Video quality.

1. There is no way to vaildate a users data. I have no way of checking if it's a reseller saying "he's great, best price, etc" and just posting it from his home PC. As such, all user posts about that are suspect. Such astroturfing has been tried in the past and will be tried into the future. Please keep in mind that the moderators are not paid, nor employees of the forum. We do this on our own time. 2. This is the industry equivlent of netural ground. Three groups with three differant agenda's are here. As such there is a balancing act. What you want would destroy the rare atmosphere here. It's pretty rare to find a forum where end users, resellers/var/retailers, and manufacturers co-exist. All three groups make trade offs about entering this place. If you don't like that policy, keep in mind that I've had dealers want no pricing, not even MSRP allowed in here. I've had manfacturers complain about user reviews they didn't like. You can't have what you want all the time. Please keep in mind that we have three moderators and each one represents one of those groups. 3. If you want to ask if anyone has any experance with spefic dealers then feel to ask. You can post the pics from thier sites without posting pricing. 4. MSRP's exist for a reason. If it's way too below MSRP then stay away. 5. If you're just looking for someone to sell you the card then ask. There are a few people on this board who are geovision resellers and can have others here vouch for them. You will probley pay MSRP or a little below it. You've settled on Geovision. Great. The only reason that you seem to be wasting weeks on this is an obsession with getting the absolutely lowest price. Generally it's not. Geovision has a problem, and kodicom has one as well. But at the same time what you propose also adds a ton of work for us. It's generally a fast way to piss people off if you demand that they do alot more work so you don't have to. I'm sorry if that bothers you but oh well. If you want to put together a site in which you track down every price and handle it...then feel free. I'm sorry if I sound fustrated but your posts have pretty much been coming off as "i have to do some effort and you people should do it for me because i don't know how and I don't want to learn and you should waste hours so I can save $0.02" and frankly most of us have stuff to do.

I'd be curious on which of the divisions (ADT or AD are my best guesses) supplied the gear. And did they sell it as a nanny cam or just a standard time lapse. If they sold it as a time lapse I fail to see how they would have any liability. If they sold it as a nanny cam then I fail to see how the liability reaches them since the state should have some experance with time lapse gear. Frankly it's dumb anyway. My ex-wife was an ER nurse at Texas Children's Hospital. She's hold me how obvious the differances are between a shaken baby and one that's just fallen. From what she discribed it sounds like a layman could tell the differance and an ER doc should have known better.

We're going about this the wrong way. There may be an easier solution for this. What are you trying to do?

The thing that kills the USB devices is two fold. One is USB bus bandwith (there just isn't that much compared to PCI) and the second is heat. The reason we killed ours is that they would work fine in bench situations but the moment they get into a warm enviroment they would fail. And people want to car deploy them, they want to boat deploy them, remote deployments all in hot enviroments.

I pulled an ad. Please note that selling OEM items and claiming them as branded items is fraud in the US.

We're also killing that line. We aren't happy with.

Are you sure of that? It seems to be working for me. Firefox 1.5.0.4, WinXP Pro SP2.

Change experts. Unless they wrote their app to be a binary driver...it's not intermingled with the kernal code. Most likely you have some kids who know windows, couldn't figure out what a linux file system looks like and decleared it to be one thing.

It wouldn't be my first choice. If I was deploying a single camera then I would go that route. If I had to do more then three I would go analog. If I went more then one IP camera then I would use the remote view in the software rather then the cameras. Honestly I wouldn't replace analog with IP on the lower end. Given the pricing differance it's going to take a while before things shift enough for IP to really compete at that price point. I might consider a hybrid system for some applications if going IP makes it more feasable or cost effective. (Wireless)

Are the cameras IR cameras by any chance? Would you say the image is washed out?

It's the other way around, Milestone rebrands from ONSSI.

If you can find it, there is an OEM building tool for unintended installs. But I perfer doing partions and formats by hand. My experance with the automation of that has been less then pleasant.

The proper way to do it is set up a SSH tunnel between the two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS_232 Has some info on it. And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-422